Pricing portraits of politicians

<p>A friend of a friend is running for mayor of our mid-sized (250K) city. She needs some new head shots for the campaign. One of our mutual friends, for whose son I shot my very first senior portrait session, convinced her to have me do the shots. I've been doing this sort of thing commercially as a side job for less than a year, and I tend to shy away from posed portraits, but taking the publicity photos for (potentially) our next mayor sounds like a great marketing tool that I'd be foolish to pass up. In this business, it never hurts to make wealthy friends.</p>

<p>For a normal, private portrait session, I typically charge an hourly flat rate and unofficially give rights to unrestricted use. I say "unofficially" because I've never written up a contract to that effect. However, publicity portraits for a public figure could be a whole different matter. I'm thinking it may be wise to get a signed contract that says what the shots can be used for and how I'm to be paid for the shots. However, I have no idea how to go about creating an appropriate contract for this sort of thing. I would love to get your opinions on what type of rights should be granted, as well as how I should get paid, if it's any different from a normal family portrait.</p>

<p>Get the largest, one-time, cash, up front payment possible. Once (or if) they become elected, their photograph will be of little monetary value.</p>

<p>Usually, politicians use their portraits for a multitude of uses, from buttons to posters to banners to almost anything you can think of. Trying to accurately and comprehensively detail them in a rights contract would be a nightmare even the most proficient of lawyers would not want to get into (and you would never get a politician to sign it anyway).</p>

<p>So, the usual practice is to give them free reign in terms of usage for as high a value as you can command. Usually that contains the sitting fee and some added value for rights usage. Now, for a small town, that would not be, say, the same as for a national campaign (normally), but you should also consider that, should this politician choose to go national (and wishes to use the same photo), then you'd be a bit cheated.</p>

<p>My advice? Charge her something solid, say your sitting fee tripled or something like that, but specify in writing that this is for local use only. Stipulate that for national or other uses they should pay you more.</p>